Magnetism: From Neuroscience to Climate Change?

A few weeks ago, a pair of Canadian scientists, David Vares and Michael Persinger, published a paper concluding that climate change is not caused by carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions from burning fossil fuels, as most people believe. Instead, they say, global warming and the rise in CO2 are both caused by decreases in the strength of the earth’s magnetic field: Earth’s Diminishing Magnetic Dipole Moment is Driving Global Carbon Dioxide Levels and Global Warming. Why is a neuroscience blogger like me writing about a climate science paper? Because the senior author, Michael Persinger, is a well-known neuroscientist. Persinger is a professor at Laurentian University in Canada. He’s perhaps best known for this researches in the field of “neurotheology“, the study of the neural basis of religious experiences. Much of his…